“Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to triumph.”
Haile Selassie

Thursday, January 8, 2015

Gov. Mike Huckabee's Appalling Ethics and Poor Judgment Make Him Unfit to be President

Gov. Mike Huckabee

Some of my conservative friends have jumped on the Mike Huckabee for President bandwagon. Some have declined, citing to issues regarding how he ran the State of Arkansas as Governor. This conservative though won't be signing up for the Huckabee for President campaign any time soon. The reason why is the former governor's appalling ethical and judgment lapses for which there is no excuse.

Max Brantley, formerly of the now defunct Arkansas Gazette, spent much of his career covering Huckabee's career in Arkansas. Writing for his new employer, Salon Magazine, Brantley in 2007 summarized Huckabee's ethical problems and judgment lapses:

Even editorialists and columnists at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, the
state’s dominant (and Republican-friendly) daily paper, use words like “petty” and “thin-skinned” to describe Huckabee. Then again, he’s compared
hard-hitting (and accurate) news reporters for the Democrat-Gazette to
the press fabulists Jayson Blair and Janet Cooke. He called liberal
columnist John Brummett of Stephens Media “constipated” when that early
admirer commenced some gentle criticism.
His administration paid $15,000 to settle a suit filed by Roby Brock,
the host of a public TV news show whom Huckabee’s people tried to force
off the air for his critical commentary.

Then there’s me. I’m the editor of an alternative weekly, but I began
covering Huckabee when I was a columnist for the now-defunct daily
Arkansas Gazette in 1991, and Mike and I have been on the outs pretty
much ever since. He once called me and the Memphis Commercial Appeal
bureau chief “junkyard journalists” for our reporting. He also compared
me, in print, to serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer and, I’ve been told on
good authority, has wished aloud for my early and violent demise.

It
all began 16 years ago for Mike and me. Huckabee, in his political
debut, was preparing to become the Bible-thumping, abortion-decrying
Republican challenger to U.S. Sen. Dale Bumpers, the Democratic
incumbent. With a playbook straight out of James Dobson, he tried to
portray Bumpers as a pornographer for his support of federal grants to
the arts.

More important, Huckabee revealed an enduring weakness
as glaring as that other Arkansas governor’s fondness for women.
Huckabee seems to love loot and has a dismissive attitude toward ethics,
campaign finance rules and propriety in general. Since that first,
failed campaign, the ethical questions have multiplied.

In the
1992 contest with Bumpers, Huckabee used campaign funds to pay himself
as his own media consultant. Other payments went to the family
babysitter.

In his successful 1994 run for lieutenant governor,
he set up a nonprofit curtain known as Action America so he could give
speeches for money without having to disclose the names of his
benefactors. He failed to report that campaign travel payments were for
the use of his own personal plane.

After he became governor in
1996, he raked in tens of thousands of dollars in gifts, including gifts
from people he later appointed to prestigious state commissions.

In the governor’s office, his grasp never exceeded his reach.
Furniture he’d received to doll up his office was carted out with him
when he left, after he’d crushed computer hard drives so nobody could ever get a peek behind the curtain of the Huckabee administration.

Until
my paper, the Arkansas Times, blew the whistle, he converted a
governor’s mansion operating account into a personal expense account,
claiming public money for a doghouse, dry-cleaning bills, panty hose and
meals at Taco Bell. He tried to claim $70,000 in furnishings provided
by a wealthy cotton grower for the private part of the residence as his
own, until he learned ethics rules prevented it. When a disgruntled
former employee disclosed memos revealing all this, the Huckabee camp
shut her up by repeatedly suggesting she might be vulnerable to
prosecution for theft because she’d shared documents generated by the
state’s highest official.

He ran the State Police airplane into
the ground, many of the miles in pursuit of political ends. Inauguration
funds were used to buy clothing for his wife. He once took control of
the state Republican Party’s campaign account — then swore the account
had been somebody else’s responsibility when it ran afoul of federal
election laws. He repeated the pattern when he claimed in a newspaper
story that his staff controlled the account to stage his second
inauguration. When I filed a formal ethics complaint over what appeared
to be an improper appropriation of donated money, he told a different
story, disavowing responsibility for the money. He thus avoided another
punishment from an Ethics Commission, which had sanctioned him on five other occasions.
He dodged nine other complaints (though none, despite his
counter-complaints, was held to be frivolous). In one case, he was saved
by the swing vote of a woman who left the chairmanship of the Ethics
Commission days later to take a state job. She listed the governor as a
reference on the job application. Finally, unbelievably, Huckabee once
sued to overturn the ban on gifts to him.

While I would normally be dismissive of pieces that appear in the left-wing, on-line Salon magazine, the fact is though these transgressions by Huckabee have been well-documented in other, more mainstream publications. The author is not lying. While in isolation each transgression one might signify a momentary lapse in judgment, together though they reveal a politician who is a thin-skinned bully who believes he is above ethics rules that others have to abide by. That's not the sort of person I want in the White House.

5 comments:

Oh Jeez--- Let's be substantive about Huckabee's faults instead of merely falling back on the liberal Democrat media machine's lament about "Fox News". I am just as weary of hearing "It's George Bush's fault".... Can't we find a liberal who will state coherent positions rather than trite slogans?

I am not at all a fan of Mr. Huckabee (or any Bush family member) and as for me I completely discount Huckabee for reasons of his philosophy, his political positions, and his RINO establishment viewpoints that favor the rich 1% like George Soros and the Wall Streeters who buy seats at Obama's thousands of dollars a plate fundraisers we little people could never afford.

About Me

I have been an attorney since the Fall of 1987. I have worked in every branch of government, including a stint as a Deputy Attorney General, a clerk for a judge on the Indiana Court of Appeals, and I have worked three sessions at the Indiana State Senate.
During my time as a lawyer, I have worked not only in various government positions, but also in private practice as a trial attorney handing an assortment of mostly civil cases.
I have also been politically active and run this blog in an effort to add my voice to those calling for reform.